Maha govt makes vacant land tax mandatory for assets registration

MUMBAI, Maharashtra: Intending to do away with irregularity in the registration of properties, the Government of Maharashtra has made submission of vacant land tax (VLT) payment receipts mandatory for asset registration.

The government has also made it mandatory to include the title owner in the adangal copy of the agricultural land. This new move will generate some additional revenue for the state government.

It was found that owners of the vacant land were not paying the tax on time. Also the local bodies were not able to collect the vacant land tax in the absence of a comprehensive database of property owners.

Local bodies have been demanding that the state government should transfer details of the land sellers and purchasers soon, so they could track down these owners to collect vacant land tax. But the government has not been able to share this data with local bodies due to some technical reasons.

Recently the Maharashtra government has introduced a new property tax regime in urban areas of the state by linking them with value of assets. The new system has replaced the old annual rental value (ARV) tax calculation method with the capital value (CV) tax system, thus bringing uniformity in taxes imposed on properties based on the market price fixed by the registration department. With this, the government was looking to do away with the irregularities in levying the tax by revenue officials in the local bodies.